Will OpenOffice.org Go to the Ball this Year?

I remain perplexed by the state of OpenOffice.org. After years of using Word 2 (yes, you read that correctly - by far the best version Microsoft ever produced), I jumped straight to OpenOffice.org as my main office software. Version 1.0 was, it is a true, a little on the, er, rough side, but since 2.0, I've had practically no problems - no crashes at all that I can remember. It's reasonably fast, not a huge memory hog (certainly nothing compared to the old versions of Firefox, or even Firefox 3.0, which still regularly eats several hundred Meg of my RAM for breakfast) and does practically everything most people who aren't Excel macro junkies could possibly want: what's not to like?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source ERP Comes of Age

Earlier this year, I called open source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) the “Cinderella of the business free software world”. But even then, I was aware of considerable activity in this sector, and that it was a matter of “when” rather than “if” ERP made its big breakthrough into the mainstream....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is this Open ERP's Big Breakthrough?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Whatever Happened to the GFDL?

With all the excitement last year over the GNU GPLv3, the Cinderella of the FSF licences, the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL) has been rather overshadowed. And yet, as this post reminds us, the GFDL is being revised too:

Although quiet, the consultation for drafting the next version of the GNU Free Documentation Licence, plus the new GNU Simpler Free Documentation License, are still ongoing:

* http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html

The online draft of GFDLv2 still has Invariant Sections. The proposed GSFDL is a documentation licence without Invariant Sections.

I don't have information about the timeline for the GFDL and GSFDL, so all I can recommend is that comments be made as soon as possible.

Thunderbird the Phoenix?

As a keen Thunderbird user I've voiced my concerns that it was turning into the Cinderella of the open source world. That's why I've been watching the moves of the new company that's been set up to oversee its development - and the postings of its head, David Ascher. He's now published his Thoughts on Thunderbird's Evolution, and they're well worth reading.

In the light of certain suggestions, I was comforted to read the following:

Mozilla is unique in that among all of the “vendors” of messaging technology, it is the only organization driven by the public benefit. This should allow us to meet the user’s needs directly, without having to get distracted by exit strategies, analysts, etc. It also makes it easier to recruit volunteers!

Indeed.

Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright

Fair use (fair dealing in the UK) is the Cinderella in the world of intellectual monopolies. Some brazen monopolists have even gone so far as to claim that fair use is not a right.

Against this background, it's good to see some US research that not only recognises the vital contribution fair use makes to society, but puts a value on it:

This report has sought to measure the footprint of fair use on the U.S. economy. It has considered not only the core fair use industries, but also the suppliers of goods and services to the fair use core and major users.

The research indicates that the industries benefiting from fair use and other limitations and exceptions make a large and growing contribution to the U.S. economy. The fair use economy in 2006 accounted for $4.5 trillion in revenues and $2.2 billion in value added, roughly 16.2 percent of U.S. GDP. It employed more than 17 million people and supported a payroll of $1.2 trillion. It generated $194 billion in exports and rapid productivity growth.

These figures are particularly important in the context of the inflated claims of various content organisations like the RIAA and MPAA with respect to losses caused by unauthorised copying. In fact those losses - and the combined contribution of copyright-based industries - are dwarfed by the scale of the fair use world.

Time for Cinderella to marry the prince. (Via Slashdot.)

OpenBSD Foundation

Bring on the opens: here's a new foundation to support OpenBSD, the Cinderella of the open world, and a few other worthy projects:

The OpenBSD Foundation is a Canadian not-for-profit corporation which exists to support OpenBSD and related projects such as OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, and OpenCVS. While the foundation works in close cooperation with the developers of these wonderful free software projects, it is a separate entity.

Formally, the corporation's objects are to support and further the development, advancement, and maintenance of free software based on the OpenBSD operating system, including the operating system itself and related free software projects.

(Via Slashdot.)